The passing of Simone Veil is a reminder of what the European Union has achieved — and of what it has lost.

At its origin, the European Economic Community was shaped by an idealism with a strong practical strain. Jean Monnet, Robert Schuman and the other founding fathers were seeking to establish institutions to prevent a repetition of the world wars that devastated the Continent in the first half of the 20th century.

As a survivor of the Holocaust, of both Auschwitz-Birkenau and Bergen-Belsen, Veil was, when she came to the European Parliament in 1979, the personification of that idealism. She had been asked by Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, the then president of France, to head the list of candidates in France from his party, l’Union pour la démocratie française. She had already served as health minister in his administration.

She agreed to leave national politics because she was convinced of the importance of the EEC for promoting peace. This was, it should be remembered, in a community of just nine countries (the founding six — France, Germany, Italy and the Benelux three — plus the three 1973 additions, the U.K., Ireland and Denmark).

Nevertheless, her election by her fellow MEPs as president of the Parliament was not guaranteed. It came about because inside the Parliament the political parties did not have the same tight grip on patronage that they acquired later, and because Giscard d’Estaing could wield influence from the outside, particularly on German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt. Despite being from the liberals, Veil had the backing of the Christian Democrats and conservatives and won in the second round of voting.

Undoubtedly, she gave the Parliament — newly elected and trying to establish its credibility — a moral authority. But she stayed out of the main inter-institutional struggle that coincided with her presidency — Parliament’s refusal to approve the budget proposed for the EU in 1980. It was a hero of that battle, Piet Dankert, who supplanted her as president. (She sought a second term but was defeated in the first round of voting.)

Veil’s passing comes at a moment when Emmanuel Macron’s election as French president is reshaping the party political landscape in France.

Arguably, Veil paid a price for staying aloof from the party political fray. She had no natural power base in the Parliament and was weakened when her own national delegation split between the Giscardians and Gaullists, though by the time of the 1984 elections she was once again heading a joint list.

Veil’s career in the Parliament and that of Giscard d’Estaing, who was an MEP from 1989 to 1993, highlight the mismatch between the parties of the liberal center in French politics and the transnational political families in the European Parliament.

French politics, because of the country’s secular political tradition and Gaullism, often deviated from the pattern elsewhere in Western Europe of Socialists (center left) versus Christian Democrats (center right), with a smaller contingent of liberals.

That meant center-right and liberal French MEPs played a lesser part in the life of the EU than they might otherwise have done. (The Socialists have been quite prominent and the impact of the Euroskeptics is not in doubt.)

But Veil’s passing comes at a moment when Emmanuel Macron’s election as French president is reshaping the party political landscape in France, as the Socialist Party and Les Républicains implode. The repercussions in the European Parliament are not yet clear: Will Macron be able to turn his domestic electoral success into influence on the European stage?

In her memoirs, Veil disclosed that while president she had secretly lobbied the French government that the Parliament should have a single seat — and therefore not divide its resources between Brussels, Luxembourg and Strasbourg. She was rebuffed and could not outweigh the influence of Pierre Pflimlin, who had briefly been French prime minister in 1958. For nearly 25 years, he was mayor of Strasbourg and he continued championing the cause of Strasbourg when he was elected to the European Parliament in 1979 and became its president in 1984.

What Veil saw, but Pflimlin perhaps did not, is that symbols outlive their meaning. Once, housing the Parliament in Strasbourg was a highly symbolic act of reconciliation: This German-speaking imperial city of the Holy Roman Empire, annexed by France in the late 17th century, was disputed territory until 1945. Now, long after Veil’s departure, as the EU’s warring origins are forgotten, so Strasbourg has acquired another meaning: as a symbol of EU waste and irrationality.

Strasbourg has become a symbol of EU waste and irrationality | Patrick Seeger/EPA

Veil’s election as president of the Parliament was founded, like the choice of Strasbourg as its home, on the powerful argument “Never again.” Her passing is a reminder that, perhaps for the best of reasons, the argument is losing some of its force. But it does still occasionally burst into flames. At the turn of the millennium, the arguments over the far right in Austria triggered passionate responses from MEPs recalling their struggles against dictatorships in Portugal, Spain and Greece. Now there are MEPs from Central and Eastern Europe who bring to the debating chamber their more recent experience of throwing off oppression. The Latvian MEP Sandra Kalniete, whose parents were deported to Siberia, where she was born, and who went on to play a leading part in Latvia’s independence movement, is only one such example.

The European Parliament has found a role for itself as a forum in which to sound the alarm. It is a role that, as the controversies over democracy and the rule of law in Hungary and Poland have recently shown, cannot comfortably be left to the European Commission or the Council of the EU.